


Cincinnatus and the Desk of Doom

by Kieron_ODuibhir



Series: Cirque de Triomphe [65]
Category: Aquaman (Comics), DCU, Superman (Comics)
Genre: Earth-3, Friendship, Gen, George Washington - Freeform, Humor, Mirror Universe, Paperwork, Politics, President Luthor, So much paperwork, but i can't find any other surname to go with his post-Crisis Inupiat background, but it contributes to the series and that's sometimes all you can ask, discussion of bizarro, i'm not sure about the name Marius for Orm, post Injustice War, so i assume dc didn't bother with one, this does not stand on its own in any way at all
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-11
Updated: 2019-04-11
Packaged: 2020-01-11 21:13:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18432221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kieron_ODuibhir/pseuds/Kieron_ODuibhir
Summary: It was a nice day, clear and bright all up the Eastern seaboard, and Atlantis and America were in communication, strengthening diplomatic relations in the wake of global catastrophe.Which was to say, at the moment, that Alex and Orm had each other on the phone, and were each taking the time to bitch about being pressured into ruling a country, and calling the bitch session diplomacy.





	Cincinnatus and the Desk of Doom

It was a nice day, clear and bright all up the Eastern seaboard, and Atlantis and America were in communication, strengthening diplomatic relations in the wake of global catastrophe.

Which was to say, at the moment, that Alex and Orm had each other on the phone, and were each taking the time to bitch about being pressured into ruling a country, and calling the bitch session diplomacy.

“—no, that is unfair, I’m not even _Atlantean,_ not really. You’re American, at least.”

Orm had an Alaskan accent, more than an Inupiat one, and Alex made a note to check whether he’d given up his US citizenship in taking the throne; it could be important at some point, especially if the Amazons did something unexpected.

(Nobody trusted the new queen, but she had the universally acknowledged advantage of _not being Superwoman_. And so far, she hadn’t tried to weasel out of paying reparations, which was very important considering all the damage everyone was trying to mend at once.)

“American, sure,” he allowed, “but I only ever bothered to learn enough upper-class manners to get by in academics and the board room. _State dinners_ , Orm, and can you tell me how many senators grew up in slums?”

“I’ll guess ‘none, for five hundred’ but whatever spoon-related difficulty you’re facing, _I’m_ hosting state dinners where I don’t recognize most of the food.”

“Fish?” hazarded Alex. Somewhat wary of the answer.

“ _Yes_ fish. Some of it’s even cooked.” Alex winced in sympathy, an expression wasted on the speakerphone grill. “And while we’re on the subject of eating, note that my mother comes from a proud line of whale-hunting captains, which is not something you discuss in polite Atlantean society.”

Alex grimaced, scanned another request for allocation of emergency funds, and signed at the bottom. He was with the Atlanteans about eating cetaceans; it smacked of cannibalism, considering their intellect. Orm probably even largely agreed, on that level, but that _couldn’t_ make it easy to turn his back on the heritage he had always owned openly, and mostly with pride. It was hard, being pulled two ways and both sides labelled ‘duty.’

“So I’m probably not going home for Nalukataq ever again,” Orm added.

“You win, you win,” Alex gave. Orm had it worse. And that was _without_ factoring in that Alex had prior administrative experience. He bet there was less paperwork underwater, though. “But I still say being king _has_ to be simpler.”

“I have more power,” Orm admitted, because Atlantis was still an absolute monarchy. Though that only went as far as the willingness of Atlanteans to obey, which was probably not pronounced after what Orin had put them through, particularly considering Orm’s relatively shaky claim to the throne, being as it was through an immortal crazy person. The Congressional resolution of emergency powers that Alex was operating under at the moment probably delegated him almost as much _practical_ authority, even if it had to permeate through more layers of bureaucracy.

And even without that, his control over the executive branch and all its many departments was strikingly absolute in theory, even if no one with respect for the rule of law would utilize that power to its fullest extent.

“On the other hand,” said the King, “if they decide they want to get rid of me, they pretty much have to kill me. And if they _don’t,_ I get to do this for the rest of my life. You’re looking at a maximum of eight years.”

“They might kill me, too,” Alex pointed out, conciliatory. Glared at the report in front of him. The entire intelligence infrastructure of the US was going to have to be torn down and rebuilt, at this rate; finding agents who _weren’t_ compromised one way or another was proving well nigh impossible. Worse than the Martian invasion; telepathy was telepathy and impersonators were impersonators, but genuine treachery in a group of professional liars and keepers of secrets...

He was getting Adeline Wilson in to head the whole mess if he had to lock himself in a lab for a week and build her surviving son a groundbreaking new mechanical voicebox as a bribe. (Or even throw some resources behind Slade’s eternal quest to track down the assassin, though that would be less satisfying all around.) Waller was the best he had until then, and while he didn’t trust her an inch he _did_ trust that she wasn’t loyal to anyone else, either.

“Have you got a bodyguard yet?” Orm asked, the assassination joke apparently less amusing when it wasn’t about him.

“No one permanent.” The Secret Service had been just as riddled with moles and assassins as the FBI. The CIA had been a little better at the agent level, but its entire command structure had had to go, and every possible cover was compromised. (The NSA was already halfway through the gutting process; Waller’s efficiency was as worrying as it was welcome.)

Mostly he’d been relying on volunteers from the League—he was thinking about offering Corben a long-term position. Alex was one of the most qualified roboticists to keep the man’s prosthetic body functioning _anyway,_ and he rather liked the idea of mutual reliance, if he was going to have a bodyguard to begin with.

“Bob came to visit,” Orm volunteered, possibly still on the same subject.

Alex smiled a little. He couldn’t help it; everyone was fond of Bob. “I heard.” He put the NSA report aside for now and returned to the Metropolis reconstruction. He was _trying_ not to favor his hometown too much, but they’d done a lot of damage fighting Ultraman, and he wanted to make sure the funds he assigned there were laid out with total efficiency. “He liked Hawaii?”

“Hawaii ‘cold and boring.’ I think he’s thinking about building a house there. Is he a US citizen?” Orm was clearly thinking some of the same things about Bob that Alex had earlier been thinking about _him_ , and Alex waved the hand with a pen in it.

“I have a team overhauling the standing laws on non-human sapients in cooperation with a Congressional sub-committee, but even under the current laws…yes, depending on which judge you ask. He was born here, for a given value of ‘born.’”

Orm hummed. “I’ve extended him an open invitation.” _In case the mood turns ugly,_ he didn’t say. Bob might have a ‘Made In the USA’ sticker metaphorically grafted to his forehead, but he was still a clone of the scariest illegal alien most people had ever heard of. And despite his good nature, he wasn’t the easiest person to get to know.

Alex was of the private opinion that even the large practical contributions Brainiac and the Golden Lights had made to the prosecution of the war were outdone by the good press their visible presence had given non-humans, in counterbalance to the inevitable reactive xenophobia. He would never pretend his country didn’t have a history of lashing out at its own in times of fear, especially when its own were visible minorities. “Good.”

He hesitated only a second before adding, “Consider this my invitation to you, as well. In case of emergency.”

“And Atlantis will be open to the League as long as I am king,” Orm returned, with all due gravitas. Then he undid the effect with a pinched mutter of, “I still can’t believe it when I say things like that.”

Alex laughed, scrawling his signature on an approval for the National Guard to work under the civilian engineers who’d been brought on to evaluate surviving-yet-damaged buildings for structural integrity, in supplement to the Army Corps. “You have this, Orm. Just…keep holding the line.”

He reached for the ‘to read carefully before disregarding’ stack and picked up yet another petition demanding blood in vengeance for the losses of the war; this time it was a list of villains who’d given themselves up to work off their debt to society using the skills and powers that had made them such effective enforcers of tyranny, and whom the petitioners wanted executed.

Oddly enough, Swamp Thing was listed. Nobody knew where Swamp Thing even _was_ these days; he was most assuredly not in the employ of the US Government.

He sighed. Raised his eyes to exchange his now customary longsuffering look with the portrait of George Washington on the opposite wall—George was long dead and probably suffering more from toothache than governance, but for all the ill you could say of the man he had never wanted political power, and the precedents he had set because of that had done the nation an incalculable good. 

“Why did we not ask Adam and Zazzala for governing advice _before_ it was a potential source of major international embarrassment?”

Orm was silent for a second; Alex thought maybe he’d asked one of them for advice anyway and was now, in his capacity as a private individual, embarrassed. “Bito says the main thing is to keep the voice of the people in mind,” he offered.

Alex set the petition aside and turned to a proposed law that had made it through Congress with remarkable efficiency, regarding the use of federal funds to subsidize private reconstruction of the damaged state and county highway systems, particularly major bridges, (in order to restore the essential infrastructure in a more timely manner than existing road crews could achieve), and the proposed system of regulation (that would hopefully keep this plan from killing a lot of people via bridge collapse without costing _too_ much in oversight expenses), and pulled a beleaguered face that was wasted on his empty office and George Washington's painted gaze, but (hopefully) came through in his voice.

“ _Bito’s_ country has a population of _four hundred and two._ ”

**Author's Note:**

> Alex's concern about having suitable manners for high society seems a lot more ridiculous now than it did when I originally posted this on ffdotnet in like 2014. Sigh.
> 
> Bito Wladon aka Sonar has a really good backstory that is frankly _wasted_ on a villain. That is the official stat for the made-up nation of Modora, which in one of the canon Earth-3s was the last place on Earth to fall to the Injustice Syndicate.
> 
> Black Adam and Queen Bee rule countries in Africa, except when Bialya is in the Levant or southwest Asia instead but we're ignoring that, and John Corben is Metallo.


End file.
